Smartmatic - Acquisition and Disposal of Sequoia

Acquisition and Disposal of Sequoia

In 2005 Smartmatic acquired Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the leading US companies in the field. Following this acquisition, Carolyn B. Maloney requested an investigation to determine whether CFIUS processes had been followed to green-light sale of Sequoia to a company "with possible ties to the Venezuelan government".

The investigation was prompted after a March 2006 electoral fiasco in Chicago and Cook County, where a percentage of the machines involved were manufactured by Sequoia, and Sequoia provided technical assistance, some by a number of Venezuelan nationals flown in for the event. According to Sequoia the tabulation problems were due to human error, as a post-election check identified only 3 mechanical problems in 1000 machines checked. Election officials blamed poor training. Some problems with the election were later blamed on a software component, developed in Venezuela, for transmitting the voting results to a central computer. A local alderman said the troubles could be due to an "international conspiracy".

After initially cooperating with the CFIUS investigation in October 2006 in particular to clarify the company's ownership, Smartmatic withdrew in December 2006 and sold Sequoia.

Among other vendors, in the 2nd quarter of 2009 Smartmatic and Sequoia competed against each other for the contract to provide voting machines and services to the 2010 national elections in the Philippines, one of the largest contracts ever in the voting technology industry. In the bidding process Sequoia was disqualified early, while Smartmatic was declared the winner.